From stochastic environments to life histories and back.

ABSTRACT: Environmental stochasticity is known to play an important role in life-history evolution, but most general theory assumes a constant environment. In this paper, we examine life-history evolution in a variable environment, by decomposing average individual fitness (measured by the long-run stochastic growth rate) into contributions from average vital rates and their temporal variation. We examine how generation time, demographic dispersion (measured by the dispersion of reproductive events across the lifespan), demographic resilience (measured by damping time), within-year variances in vital rates, within-year correlations between vital rates and between-year correlations in vital rates combine to determine average individual fitness of stylized life histories. In a fluctuating environment,

SUBMITTER: Tuljapurkar S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2690509 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature